Canyoning. Eh... what now?

A couple of weeks back I was trying to get a group together to travel north to Aomori to take part in their annual Trivia weekend up there (which last year really was fantastic, even despite the crappy rainy season rubbish). Everyone whos anyone knows that sending an e-mail out to ALTs and expecting a response is like pulling teeth, so needless to say my plan failed miserably, and alas we would not be taking a 7 (8?) hour trek in the car for a big gaijin gathering for a session.
A few of the girls were talking about how it would clash with their plans for "canyoning" and needless to say I was a bit baffled. The description I got was, "You chuck yourself in a river and let the current take you as you bob along happy out with yourself". Eh...ok sign me up.

Well, ya big shower of liars. Nowhere in that description was there any mention of waterfalls and jumping from sizeable heights to plummit into swirling water nicknamed "The Washing Machine".

So with no knowledge of the afore mentioned, I, in ignorant bliss took off nursing the mother of all hangovers at 7 o clock on a Sunday morning with Paul, Kristen and her "brothers", Ros, Johanna, Natasha, Martin and Keiko, Sammy, and Kirsten to find out what Canyoning was all about...

So yeah, canyoning is negotiating your way down steep canyons by abseiling and jumping waterfalls and cliffs, cascading down natural chutes and swimming through crystal clear pools. Sounds nice, dunnit!?

CANYONS is an outdoor adventure centre down in Gunma and they offer you the "Refresh your mind, body, and soul adventure". You can book full/half days courses of canyoning, rafting, caving, downhill mountain biking, canadian kayaking or paragliding. The owner is a Kiwi guy whos been in Japan for over 10 years, speaks perfect Japanese and has a band of workers who are up for a laugh aswel. Our group went for the half day canyoning pakage and if you threw in an extra 2000yen, you had a guy with a camera follow you for the day getting you to give him your best goofy poses and not so posed "Oh holy shit I'm going to die" faces.

Thankfully though, there were no serious injuries sustained, although Martin did give it his best shot by spliting the skin open above his left eye when he was sliding down a 20m waterfall and skimmed his face off some rock. Nice. I paint a nice picture, don't I? Bet you're dying to have a go now...

We had a fantastic day at Fox Canyon scaring the shite out of ourselves and each other for that matter. I keep watching film that was taken of Natasha about to jump off the rock ledge over and over. I think it was the most frightening part of my day! Watching her go through psyching herself up, from down below having just done it myself and then watching her change her mind about jumping at the last minute and sort of slow motion stumbling off anyway... oh god.priceless.

We ended the day on a really randomly hilarious note where our guide had us all stand in a circle at the point in the river where the water was knee high, had us take off our helmets, looked around and said "Now, I want you to put your helmet in the water like this, and ... (cue insane throwing of water at the group) soak the people around you". And so began the massive water fight, even though we were all wet already (??) and I managed to smack Kristen in the face with my helmet. Sorry wench! So there you have it. I was very fun canyoing enjoyed. ;)

Mucho blogging to be done, but heres something that made me laugh (if only for the ridiculous diagrams!)that I thought I'd share.

In the words of Homer Simpson... "Mmmmmmm.Donuts."

And in Korea's case... why feed the country when the leader needs more money to relaunch his nuclear programme?! Last year he was reported to have imported pizza ovens and two Milanese chefs so that he can eat his favourite Italian food whenever he wants. So much for being ronery.

"That" time of year again...

The exams are done, the results are out, the kids know where they're off to and they're also one step closer than I am to a career (in that they know what they want!). Time to say "So long". Heres some of the messages I got from my lovely kids. Some of them are sweet, some of them just plain funny!

I love this one so much... "Have a good one!" lol

haha. lick arse! its a bit late now... you got your results ;p

What about the other year?!?!?

Yes I'm an excellent teacher. A very excellent teacher...

Ok, so eh... not the most flattering photo but I'll miss these feckers.

I could have shot them while at the same time, locked them in them room and held them for randsom.!For our last day together, the san nenseis sang Greendays Time of your Life and a song called "Jaded" by a band called Mest?

They finished up with a really lovely version of Snow Patrols "Chasing Cars"...my fave Snow Patrol song. I'll miss them. March truly sucks!

The Hodare Matsuri

"The wha?" I hear you say!!

Hodare matsuri, translated as the Penis Festival is quite the unique festival in Japan. Perhaps unique TO Japan for that matter!Hodare in English is 'male genitals', but if the characters are written in hiragana, the meaning then becomes 'the ripening of rice plants'.
Every year on the second Sunday of March the locals of Shimoraiden, a wee mountain village near Nagaoka City get together to show some love to a large wooden penis, 2.2m in length, and which weighs 600kg. The religious belief and tradition being that those who pray to or touch the symbol ensure a happy marriage, fertility, healthy children, and the good life!

So we rocked up to the show at about 11.30 after a lengthy trek from Niitsu that morning. The snow was pelting down as the K-cars struggled up the mountain. In one car there were sounds of "Oh, look, the trees are beautiful." "Aren't they? Today would be great for boarding" "Isn't everything feckin gorgeous when its covered in a blanket of snow". (Ros, Jenelle and Pam)At the same time, not so very far away from the other K-car came "Frikkin hell man, whats with all the snow? Its frikkin Spring already", "This sucks, are we there yet?", "These things had better be worth it, ya'll" (Natasha, Kristen and Johanna).

So our trekkin wasn't quite finished when we got there as we had to park a bit of a way away from the actual shrine which meant that five of the six of us had to plod through the snow in our runners aka sneakers aka trainers (!!!!) So the , moral of the story is, on top of being frozen anyway, we were all now walking around with cold, damp feet and hangovers. Cheery stuff. But the spirits were still bright surprisingly!

Well we hadn't been there long until we made some friends. Oh yes, the festival was working its magic already. Two somewhat elderly, drunk Japanese men decided that we were the order of the day and they would stop at nothing to get out attention.

It started off with chivalry, and the nice gesture of holding an umbrella over us. Good move. They had us. The next move was "guess the country" when the two of them simultaneously launched "America, England, Scotland.." etc at us with the hope of impressing us with their geographical knowlegde. From there, I was offered some magic potion for my fertility... Japanese sake with a dead fish floating in it. It looked dodgy, but what the hell...I'll try anything once. So from there on, we skipped a million bases and I had the Japanese dude with the brolly grab my arm with one hand and his crotch with the other while he yelled "SYMBOL.... PANIS!" at me. Then frightening the crap out of me, with same hand, he took a dart for my nether regions!!!!Eh steady on there old man, but I'm taken ;) and I also had my band of highly trained killing machine ALTs watching my back. lol

The paparrazzi were also out in full force that day and it didn't matter what we did, there was a picture taken. One guy in particular took a bit of a shine to Johanna and I, so we decided to get our own back (see below!)

They say that if the festival was stopped, misfortune would cripple the local people. Now we couldn't have that, could we? So us being the do-gooder gaijin folk that we are, we made sure that the show went on!! What a laugh! and what a day!

Thanks girls xxx

The little green man, the willy tree, and the shrine with a big knob inside

After the initial acceptance of what the festival is actually about, I still found it difficult to get my head around the fact that a lot of local newly wed women get up on stage in front of the neighbors and are, for want of a better description... "egged on" in their reproductive skills area!

Ehm.Gambarre!